Saturday Haiku: The Arrival

  a flock of robins
keeping watch on bare branches
as springtime buds swell

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Photo by Tom Gordon

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Friday Funnies: Is There Life on Mars?

First photos of the Martian landscape from Perseverance

So is there life on Mars?
Not on Thursdays, but on Saturday night, they roll!

As evidenced by this photo taken on Sunday morning:

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Monday Music: The Blizzard

 Here is another piece that happily came across my YouTube feed: a previously unreleased song recorded by John Denver. "The Blizzard" was written by singer/songwriter Judy Collins. Since a historic winter snow and ice event has just swathed a good portion of the country, perhaps this is a good time to listen again to the late John Denver.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Winter Snows

 

 as snows softly fall
a barn filled with hope and hay
stands on frozen ground

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Photo: "An old barn on U.S. Hwy. 11 near Springville Alabama"  by Joe Songer

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Rush Limbaugh's On-Air Reign

The news came this past Wednesday that conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh has died after an extended battle with lung cancer. Rush Limbaugh was a boon to the talk radio industry, but he was a bane to the community and a blight upon the broadcasting landscape. He tapped into our worst, most selfish actions and reactions and gave multitudes permission to abide in their hatred and bigotry. When his radio program first came to the Birmingham area it aired on the most widely listened to talk radio station, WERC. I would often listen in to find out what the brouhaha was all about. This was in the day when one could hear informative interview programs that were nationally broadcast, as well as local talk, of which Tim Lennox was a favorite in the city. It didn’t take much listening to the spouting of Rush and the fawning of the “ditto-heads” calling in to understand what was happening. Nevertheless, I kept my car radio tuned to WERC Talk Radio because I felt it was important to hear what was being said what others were thinking. 

The other part of my story was that I had been a Baptist seminarian who was so dismayed by the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that I had left the denomination 5 or 6 years earlier. I guess I still had some lingering hope for “my people,” why else would I have wandered into the Baptist Bookstore one day? As I entered the bookstore, which at the time was still on University Boulevard near UAB, there on prominent display was Rush Limbaugh’s newly published first book, The Way Things Ought to Be. I had listened to Rush enough to know that he made no claim to any religious faith and had stated as much, yet here in the store that once presented only what was considered to be aids for Bible study and Christian living was a book by a man who made no attempt to hide his narrow-minded bigotry and expressed no love at all for any faith practice.

That moment simply re-affirmed for me the rightness of my decision to have parted company with the church of my childhood. Moreover, it showed me that the core beliefs of the denomination rested not on the Bible, as was publicly stated, but on bigotry, xenophobia, and hate. It also showed me that you don’t have to be religious to be a racist bigot, but a racist bigot is readily welcomed by many religious folks. I walked out that day with no further desire to even look back, though I have carried the grief that good-hearted people can be so easily led astray.

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Poems for Winter Days

As we come out from under our historic winter storm, here are two winter poems read by Alabama Poet Laureate, Jennifer Horne in this week's reading for her Midweek Poetry Break.

"I grew up thinking of Edsel Ford (no relation to the automotive Fords) as an Arkansas poet, known and much admired by my poet mother, but I recently learned he was born and spent the first two years of his life in Eva, Alabama, in Morgan County (about 30 miles due west of Guntersville, as the crow flies). For the Mid-Week Poetry Break, here are two poems by Edsel Ford, on the theme of winter." ~ Jennifer Horne, @ALPoetLaureate

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Monday Music: Unchained Melody (Austin Brown)

This came across my YouTube feed. It is a beautiful rendition of a beautiful melody

 

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Saturday Haiku: February

 

in the cold drizzle
of a grey overcast day
a robin’s bright song

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Photo by Tony Straub at Wildlife Photography

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The Presidential Inaugural Poem: Calling Us to Our Touchstones

                                                                    “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses”

        ~ John F. Kennedy

 

Amanda Gorman captured the nation with her recitation of “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration last month. The Presidential Inaugural Poem is a relatively new thing in the United States.  There have only been six in our history, and they have all occurred in my lifetime.  The first inaugural poem, “The Gift Outright,” was recited by Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. I may have seen it – our family watched the inauguration on TV. At six years of age, I cannot claim to remember it, but I do remember that it was my first realization that there was a president of the United States and that it is a pretty big deal.

I can say that I have eagerly tuned in to hear each inaugural poem since. There was no poetry at inaugurations after Robert Frost’s 1961 poem until Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Clinton said that when he decided that he wanted a poem, he knew right away that he would ask Maya Angelou, who grew up in Stamps, Arkansas not far from his hometown of Hope. Miller Wiliams read a poem at Clinton's second inauguration. After that, there was another hiatus of poetic voices until Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 when Elizabeth Alexander read “Praise Song for the Day.”

That first inaugural poem by Robert Frost began with an embarrassingly bumbling beginning. Frost was famous in the American literary field and his work was known by every school child. Kennedy had asked him to read “The Gift Outright,” unless he wanted to write one for the occasion. Mr. Frost did, indeed, compose a new poem, “Dedication,” and went to the podium to read it. The blustery wind and the bright sun that day made it impossible for the 86-year-old poet to make out what he had written. Finally, he put the paper aside and recited from memory “The Gift Outright,” and the bumbling grandpa then rose to his full poetic stature.

Because it has been so important for me to hear these inaugural poems, I wanted to bring them all together to hear again what the poets spoke to the nation. I wanted to place myself again in that liminal space where poetry can enliven, or as John F. Kennedy put it in his address at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst:

When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment.

I have assembled each of the Presidential Inaugural Poem events here for your viewing. If you take the time to watch and listen, you can get a sense of the role of the poet in the public square and you can see how that poetic voice has changed over the years, reflecting the dynamic interplay between poetry and society. We can also see what JFK described as “the richness and diversity of [our] existence.”

First, there is Robert Frost, the aging poet who honored the nation’s youngest president with a poem that in retrospect is perhaps a vestige of the patriarchy that went unquestioned from the time of our “founding fathers” to the new day that would be heralded by a young JFK (who still referred to “areas of man’s [sic] concern”). Then we see Maya Angelou opening up the national vista to reflect the growing awareness of the diversity of people who inhabit our land.

By the time we get to Amanda Gorman’s bright poem, we see a poet in her youth celebrating the inauguration of our oldest elected president. Her poem exemplifies how spoken word artists have influenced the way poetry is delivered to the public.

If you want to read the texts of each inaugural poem, you can go the compilation at TheLiterary Hub. 

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Photo credit: Gorman Photo by Alex Wong (Getty Images) Frost photo is from a Los Angeles Times File Photo

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Here are the Presidential Inaugural Poems in order of occurrence:

1961 Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright"

1993 Maya Angelou, "On the Pulse of Morning" 

1997 Miller Williams, "Of History and Hope" 

2009 Elizabeth Alexander, "Praise Song for the Day" 

2013 Richard Blanco, "One Today" 

2021 Amanda Gorman, "The Hill We Climb"

 

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Monday Music: Homeward Bound (Paul Simon and Willie Nelson)

In 2003, Paul Simon helped to celebrate Willie Nelson's 70th birthday to sing "Homeward Bound." The two of them sang it together and WIllie offered some excellent picking on old Trigger.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Cloud Canopy

cloudy and sunlit,
the canopy of the world

makes the heart look up

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Photo: Skies of Central Utah
Credit: Scott Wright of Scott Wright Photography



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Friday Funnies: Mel Brooks Impersonates Frank Sinatra

Most of us have heard Ray Charles' serious and iconic rendition of "America the Beautiful," but Mell Brooks gives us an idea of how Frank Sinatra might have delivered the song.

 

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This Is How the Dread Begins: When Fascism Rears Its Head

U. S. Capitol Building (Getty Images)

If you look up to the tabs at the top of this blog page, you will see one titled, "Journalistic Poetry." I began writing those poems in January of 2016, in response to the new administration in the White House. There are currently 21 poems in that collection, most written during the first 100 days of the current administration. The following poem was first posted in September of 2017.  I re-post it today because even though the authoritarian fascist presidential candidate lost the election, the storming of the Capitol Building on January 6 and the subsequent kowtowing of Republicans to fascist elements demonstrates that we are in danger of forfeiting our democratic heritage. ~ CK

Fas-cism: a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control of social and economic life, and extreme pride in country and race, with no expression of political disagreement allowed.  (Cambridge Dictionary)

The Government We Get

This is how the dread begins –

                    too easily.     

Fascism is too easily

Spoken.

The word itself

Suddenly stops

                   all examination

And hinders

                 possibilities.

It makes us think

                   in graphic images –

Lets us picture the other

As mindless oppressors

                   whose foreign tongue

And jackboot heels

Set perimeters of conformity –

And the other

                    is always the other.    

Fascism is too easily

Held

In times of hate

When the world becomes

                 afraid and uncertain.

It has been

Our default mode

Of governing

Ourselves – as if

                   we would be governed.

What harm is it

                   to want to be

With people who look like us?

Where we can speak with ease

                   and without care?   

We gravitate toward a system

                   that helps us

Not think

Not struggle

                   when times are hard.

We then hand it over

                   to those in charge

To set the perimeters of conformity. 

Just let me have

                    my own couch

And kitchen table –

And people like me.

It all seems natural

And normal.

Therein lies the problem.

This is how the dread begins.

                                              

                                                  ~ CK 

Statuary Hall and the U.S. Capitol Building (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

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Monday Music: Alison Krauss - In my mind I`m going to Carolina

 

 

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